Vertical Search
I got the summary from Search Views which i found via tom evslin’s blog (which i found via GigaOM). With disclaimers that i haven’t read the actual report, here’s what I make out the content of the analysis to be. Search Big 3 (G, Y & M$) can be likened to TV big 3 (ABC, CBS, NBC) of early days. ABC, CBS, NBC are general purpose networks covering mainstream content. Just like we have sports network, we will get vertical search.
Uh-huh. Tom Evslin has a reasonable re-buttal of the above analogy. I think it makes sense. However, I am not sure if i agree with his conclusion.
To be honest, I think that this already played out on the web - with “Portals”. We started with big web players like AOL, MSN, Y!, Excite and quite a few other players wanting to become the portal of choice for the users. A lot of niche services came up because these portals are unable to focus on specific verticals (Monster, hotjobs, Auto trader, Imdb, Ebay etc). Eventually, the industry consolidated, and now we are left with few players again. Couple of new big players emerged from this shake out (EBay, Google), and some mid sized players (monster, auto trader, expedia etc). A lot of death and destruction as well 
The scenario that will play out - IMHO -is very similar to the above. Big 3 are fighting against each other. The content on the web is exploding. The number of users online and time spent online is being relatively flat. The software development models are changing. In this environment, we the big 3 stretched thin and not able to a great job of organizing and present the content the way users need it. This is the opportunity.
How do you collate, organize the vast content on the web, and present in a fashion that makes meaningful sense for the task at hand?
The vertical search folks argue, that by including domain specific knowledge into the search algorithms you can make the experience better. I tend to agree with that.
However, I think the long term trend that plays is something like what happened before.
- A lot of these niche small players come along, focus on verticals and organize information better.
- Some of them get big enough and others fall apart
- The top ones get bought out by Y!, G, and M$.
- This causes excitement, inviting more entrepreneurs to try and solve other problems and VCs to fund companies that solve similar problems
- Eventually, this results in the frenzy that funds companies which do “vertical search for digital cameras”.
- Om Malik will write a blog post that says “I predicted this”
- Most of the vertical search apps will have smaller markets than the current top players, very few (1-2) might emerge with a big market cap. A lot of the small players will get wiped out.
- We will be left with 3-7 top players in the web space.
